The noble savage image was a European construct, not an observed reality

Evidence

Earlier, the French philosopher Montaigne, in his essay “Des Cannibales” (1580), had placed his noble savage in America. The idea quickly took hold on the European imagination. The famous painting of “The Different Nations of America” by Le Brun in Louis XIV’s (1638–1715) Versailles Palace was dominated by a “heroic” representation of an American Indian—grave, tall, proud, independent, statuesque, and naked (see Honour 1978, 118). Paintings and engravings of American Indians dressed like ancient Greeks or Romans became popular. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 654

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the ‘noble savage’ as one pole of the European construction of the colonized Other — a key trope for the Orientalism toolkit.
• XREF: Directly parallels Said’s Orientalism: the West constructing the Orient/Other through its own projections rather than observation. Also connects to the reader’s scaffolding of colonial psychology. — connects to: The aboriginal is a European invention, not an observed reality. — , Stephanie B. Martens - Civilization and…, 82